The unspeakable horror of life inside a North Korean prison camp…
Written By: 孙智谦 on December 11, 2008
One Comment
 Shin Dong-hyuk is the soul escapee of North Korea’s prison camps |
| He may be a free man in a physical sense, but Shin Dong-hyuk is still a prisoner. He is the only man known to have successfully escaped a North Korean prison camp, but he still bears physical scars and lives with unimaginable emotional anguish. Born in Prison Camp No. 14 to parents of a marriage arranged by prison guards as a reward for his father’s good work as a mechanic, he has experienced unspeakable horror in his twenty-six years of life: torture by fire in an attempt to extract a confession about a family conspiracy that he knew nothing about, having half of one of his fingers cut off as a consequence of accidentally dropping a sewing machine at the prison camp’s garment factory, and witnessing countless executions in the prison camp’s square, including those of his own mother and brother. His cousin was raped by prison guards, and food was so scarce that one young girl was beaten to death for having just a few grains of contraband wheat in her pocket. He even once picked just three kernels of corn out of a pile of cow dung, wiped them off, and ate them, considering himself lucky for happening upon such a treat. He says that growing up in the prison camp, he never heard the word ‘love’ and that he can’t grasp the concept of forgiveness that he hears spoken of at church. Perhaps the most tragic of all: he suffered all of this simply because he was born to his father, who was in turn guilty because of being the brother of two men who had collaborated with South Korea during the Korean War. |
| The Washington Post article I sourced goes into even more heart-wrenching detail about his life inside the camp and the mental and emotional anguish he has experienced since breaking free of his prison. And similar situations no doubt play out daily among the estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inmates in North Korea’s prison camps. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around how any human could endure such suffering. The fact that he did is a testament to how well the human mind is designed. I can’t help but feel a bit guilty for being in a comfortably heated room as I write this. To say that it is unfair that I was born here in America and that he was born there in such a demonic place is the grossest of understatements… |
| Link to article |
Tags: escapee, horror, North Korea, prison camp, Shin Dong-hyuk, torture
I feel so sorry for this young man and all the other people who have been there in those prisons in North Korea. I hope that everyone of them is freed someday soon and God will punish all those mean people who are making them suffer! I pray for them and I hope everyone else does too. Thank you.